Late Lyrics and Earlier, With Many Other Verses

Автор

Томас Харди

Жанр

Зарубежная классика

Год написания книги

2017

<< 1 ... 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 ... 54 >>

На страницу:

Перейти

27 из 54

Настройки чтения

Размер шрифта

Высота строк

Поля

Last year their May to Michaelmas term was run,
Last autumn browned and buried every one,
And no more know they sight of any sun.

HER TEMPLE

Dear, think not that they will forget you:
– If craftsmanly art should be mine
I will build up a temple, and set you
Therein as its shrine.

They may say: “Why a woman such honour?”
– Be told, “O, so sweet was her fame,
That a man heaped this splendour upon her;
None now knows his name.”

A TWO-YEARS’ IDYLL

Yes; such it was;
Just those two seasons unsought,
Sweeping like summertide wind on our ways;
Moving, as straws,
Hearts quick as ours in those days;
Going like wind, too, and rated as nought
Save as the prelude to plays
Soon to come – larger, life-fraught:
Yes; such it was.

“Nought” it was called,
Even by ourselves – that which springs
Out of the years for all flesh, first or last,
Commonplace, scrawled
Dully on days that go past.
Yet, all the while, it upbore us like wings
Even in hours overcast:
Aye, though this best thing of things,
“Nought” it was called!

What seems it now?
Lost: such beginning was all;
Nothing came after: romance straight forsook
Quickly somehow
Life when we sped from our nook,
Primed for new scenes with designs smart and tall.
– A preface without any book,
A trumpet uplipped, but no call;
That seems it now.

BY HENSTRIDGE CROSS AT THE YEAR’S END

(From this centuries-old cross-road the highway leads east to London, north to Bristol and Bath, west to Exeter and the Land’s End, and south to the Channel coast.)

Why go the east road now?.
That way a youth went on a morrow
After mirth, and he brought back sorrow
Painted upon his brow
Why go the east road now?

Why go the north road now?
Torn, leaf-strewn, as if scoured by foemen,
Once edging fiefs of my forefolk yeomen,
Fallows fat to the plough:
Why go the north road now?

Why go the west road now?
Thence to us came she, bosom-burning,
Welcome with joyousness returning.
– She sleeps under the bough:
Why go the west road now?

Why go the south road now?
That way marched they some are forgetting,
Stark to the moon left, past regretting
Loves who have falsed their vow.
Why go the south road now?

Why go any road now?
White stands the handpost for brisk on-bearers,
“Halt!” is the word for wan-cheeked farers
Musing on Whither, and How.
Why go any road now?

“Yea: we want new feet now”
Answer the stones. “Want chit-chat, laughter:
Plenty of such to go hereafter
By our tracks, we trow!
We are for new feet now.”

During the War.

PENANCE

“Why do you sit, O pale thin man,
At the end of the room
By that harpsichord, built on the quaint old plan?
– It is cold as a tomb,
And there’s not a spark within the grate;
And the jingling wires
Are as vain desires